Filed under: Notre Dame
SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- On Wednesday afternoon I was in my Mishwaka, Ind., hotel room and on the phone with Dr. Gil Stork. Outside the skies were clear, but wind gusts shook the trees and sent autumn leaves scurrying. Nearly 50 years ago to the day, Dr. Stork, a center for the Cal Polytechnic College football team, had survived a plane crash that killed half of his teammates.
"We were joking as we boarded the plane about the weather conditions," said Stork, now the president of Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo, Calif., as he described the heavy fog that blanketed the Toledo Airport on Oct. 29, 1960.
Just as Stork said those words, a tweet came across my feed saying that a video tower at Notre Dame had fallen. I saw the photo and instantly suspected the worst. Because the tower fell on a Wednesday afternoon, some student manager -- 20-year-old junior Declan Sullivan, as it turned out -- was probably atop it videotaping practice. When I saw the photo showing that the tower had landed on pavement and estimating that the tower scales at least 40 feet skyward, I began to pray for a miracle.
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